Thursday, April 18, 2013

So, out of our four boys, three had inguinal hernia repairs. I talked about Talmage’s here and Orrin’s here.

Wyatt’s was on Monday. We got to the hospital early and took our stuff to our room and handed him off. We walked around until it was done (Brett ran into a couple doctors he knows from work, and the guy was saying how famous Brett is after his winning the business competition thingee), and then we came to the post-op room to see him. He was really really upset when he woke up and screamed his poor little hoarse scream for a long time. We finally got him to go back to sleep and the next time he woke up he did better. But he didn’t go pee and he was really puffy—when I held his hand it was so weird because it didn’t feel like him!— edema, I guess is the technical term, so they didn’t let him leave the post-op room all afternoon. The anesthesiologist did a little ultrasound to check out his bladder. But then it was time for the post-op room to close at 6:00, and he still hadn’t peed, so they had him stay in the ICU overnight, instead of just with me in our own recovery room which had been the plan.

He did end up peeing (a lot) in the night, and his swelling went down. But it was a pretty weird night because my room was actually in the Frauenklinic, which is a different hospital than the one where Wyatt was, but it’s connected by an underground tunnel, so every time Wyatt woke up to eat they called over to where I was, and a nurse woke me up, and I walked down some stairs, through this forever long tunnel/hallway, and then up the elevator again to feed him. I did that three times, and the fourth at 6:30 or so. But the next day he was quite a bit happier.

In the morning they let him come to my room for part of the day just to watch him a little bit more. Brett had to go to work so he just brought the little kids to me. It was really fun for them, because we were in the pediatric part of the hospital and they had tons of toys and bikes and books that the kids happily played with.

And the clowns came too.

And that is the story of Wyatt’s surgery.

This morning I took Orrin to the doctor to get the stitches out of his lip. On the first one (there were maybe eight or so), he started crying and screaming. I tried to help hold him still, but he was really fighting (and I was holding Wyatt with no place to set him down). So then the doctor said he would give him a shot to make him fall asleep, but then they didn’t have the right medication, so then they tried again to see if they could get the stitches out, this time with the doctor holding Orrin and the assistant snipping them. Orrin screamed his little guts out and fought like a banshee. They got all of them but one, but it was deeper than the others and the assistant nicked his lip, so it was bleeding and then she really couldn’t get a good hold on it, so after all that we’re going back in tomorrow so they can give him the shot to make him go to sleep to get one last stitch out.

Dear God... couldn't they just give him some local anesthesia (shot, liquid or spray) to soothe the pain??? Why didn't they? It's absolutely way safer than the general anesthetics they're going to administer.